The Departed Editing Analysis

When asked to choose a film based on its great editing techniques, I had to choose academy award winning, The Departed (Scorsese, 2006). This film starring Hollywood power houses, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, and Jack Nicholson, won the 2006 academy for best editing and I believe that it was deservingly so. The editing in this film is very interesting in a sense that it is pretty different from the editing of most films that I have viewed. The editing is done by Thelma Schoonmaker. She is known for being the film editor behind Martin Scorsese, doing the editing on a long list of his films such as Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990), Gangs of New York (Scorsese, 2002), Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010) and The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese, 2013), just to name a few. So with qualifications like that, something amazing is always expected. However, this is probably one of the choppiest and irregular messes, I have ever seen and with that said, it is simply amazing.
I believe that these stylistic choices in editing were made to enhance the film and a decision that was made based off of the plot of the film. This film has a very complex story, so it needed an editing technique to match it and to boost and play off of the design of the screenplay. The most common technique used in this film is often a big no-no for films. The use of the infamous jump cuts is used a lot in this film has is something that have become synonymous with Thelma Schoonmaker. This editing technique makes for an interesting view of the film. When viewing the film one thing that I noticed was that the film seemed like it was all over the place for most of the beginning and I believe that was not only contributed to the film itself, but also the